Privacy Coin Verge Suffers Third 51% Attack, Analysis Shows 200 Days of XVG Transactions Erased

According to various reports, the cryptocurrency network Verge has suffered a 51% attack that led to a massive 560,000+ block reorganization. Analysts believe the Verge network attack could be the deepest blockchain reorganization (reorg) in history with roughly 200 days worth of verge transactions wiped.

Reports Show Verge Network Experienced a Massive 560,000+ Blocks Reorg

The blockchain Verge and its native token XVG once made headlines for being added to the popular adult website Pornhub. This week, the Verge network has been 51% attacked according to multiple analysts and observers on social media. Verge has suffered from a total of three 51% attacks. One back in April 2018, and then another 51% attack a month later, when a malicious XVG attacker rejected a number of blocks.

The network data analyst at Coin Metrics, Lucas Nuzzi tweeted about the issues with XVG on February 15. The past 200 days worth of XVG transaction history just vanished,” Nuzzi told his 9,000 Twitter followers. “This is likely the deepest reorg that has ever taken place in a “top 100” cryptocurrency,” he added. The action was caught by a Coin Metrics node according to Antoine Le Calvez who also wrote about the Verge network situation.

“Looks like XVG (Verge) experienced a massive 560k+ blocks reorg,” he said. “Coin Metrics node is on a new chain whose last common ancestor with the previous chain dates to July 2020,” Le Calvez added with a screenshot of the action.

The researcher and author Hasu also wrote about the problems with XVG. “Verge (XVG) is experiencing the deepest ever reorg in any PoW blockchain,” Hasu said at the time. “An attacker has replaced 200 days worth of [transactions] with empty blocks, so thousands of balances have simply evaporated.”

Hasu added:

What sounds scary is actually pretty easy to counter – nodes will reject the attacker’s chain and restore the previous one. But it’s another data point showing why GPU mineable coins are inherently insecure.

Bittrex Pauses Verge Wallet

Additionally, the popular cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex announced it had paused the XVG wallet. “The XVG wallet on bittrex.com and the Bittrex Mobile App is currently in maintenance,” the exchange wrote on Monday.

The creator of litecoin (LTC) Charlie Lee told people on Twitter to “always be wary of coins that are highly NiceHash-able.” “When there’s no upfront cost, the incremental cost can be quite cheap. And it would be easy to do a 51% attack and reorg the chain,” Lee explained.

Of course, XVG supporters and team members say the attack was thwarted and failed. “Thanks to the power of [the] open source community, XVG blockchain has overtaken the malicious chain 6 h ago,” the official Verge Twitter account tweeted on Wednesday. “The attack failed,” the account added.

The cryptocurrency verge (XVG) is a multi-algorithm enabled proof-of-work-based token, according to the project’s “black paper.” The multi-algorithm allows people to mine XVG with a variety of devices the paper adds. Verge (XVG) is open source and claims to be privacy-centric by leveraging Tor and stealth transactions. However, XVG had also been accused of leaking IP addresses associated with hundreds of XVG transactions. Since the third attack on the Verge network, XVG has shed more than 10% in value.